


Extreme Incantations

by meanwhiletimely



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (...Literally), Blood Magic, Canon Compliant, Divination, Dom/sub Undertones, Edging, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Grindeldore, Legilimency, Light Bondage, M/M, Magical Experimentation, POV Gellert Grindelwald, Prophetic Visions, Sex Magic, Sexual Experimentation, Summer of 1899
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 15:32:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18719920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanwhiletimely/pseuds/meanwhiletimely
Summary: Gellert makes a discovery in Albus's bookshelves that results in a revelation.





	Extreme Incantations

"Who knows where the Elder Wand lies hidden? The trail goes cold with Arcus and Livius. Who can say which of them really defeated Loxias, and which took the wand? And who can say who may have defeated them? History, alas, does not tell us."  
_— Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_

"Predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed."  
— Albus Dumbledore

* * *

**Godric's Hollow** — **1899**

The quest for the Hallows, in Gellert's opinion, frequently involves far too much _reading_ and far too little actual _questing_.

Albus, of course, disagrees.

He is seated primly in his chair, engrossed in a rare edition of  _Shadows and Spirits_ by Barnabas Deverill, as Gellert sprawls out on the rug with Albus's entire enormous collection of Hallows history and lore. They are consumed, today, with the pivotal fate of Deverill's murderer: Loxias, the seventh known owner of the Elder Wand.

"I still say his mother killed him." 

Albus raises a skeptical brow and turns a page.  _"Mistress_ of the Elder Wand? Doubtful."

"So contemptuous of the fairer sex," chides Gellert—adding archly, "Not that I'm complaining."

Albus glances up from his book at that. "On the contrary," he says, a slight smile tugging at his lips, "witches are wiser than wizards, as a rule, and whatever drives us to the Hallows—"

"Destiny? Fate? Divine right?"

"—it is not wisdom."

"Fair enough," says Gellert, lounging back against the bookshelves in a way that invites Albus to look at _him_ and not the books. He is, regrettably, ignoring the invitation. "Arcus or Livius, then. Who was the wiser of the two?"

"Interesting, isn't it," says Albus, in a deceptively casual tone, "that the trail goes cold on  _two_. There can only be one Master of the Elder Wand."

"Not necessarily," Gellert counters sharply. "You know my argument: defeat is required, not death. If Arcus and Livius defeated Loxias together—"

"They would find the Wand reluctant to split its loyalties." Albus fixes Gellert with one of his most piercing stares. "It would choose the strongest."

Gellert holds Albus's gaze for a long, taut moment, then looks away—suddenly fascinated by a Godelot manuscript. "Perhaps they shared it," he says lightly. "Perhaps they  _kept_ it, that way—shifting ownership many times, by choice."

Albus's tone is as deliberately light as his own. "Such extraordinary trust between them, by your reckoning."

"Well," says Gellert, discarding Godelot and rising to lean over the chair with predatory grace, "you know what they say about Arcus and Livius."

"As close as brothers," Albus says dryly, eyes darting toward Gellert's lips. 

"Oh,  _closer."_ In one fluid movement, Gellert seizes the book from Albus's hands and tosses it aside, silencing his protest with a kiss. He tastes like sugar and citrus and _power,_ with sweets and tea and magic all mingling together on his tongue. It's intoxicating. Obliterating. Kissing Albus makes Gellert want to devour him, swallow him whole.

"Is that what you would have us do, then?" he asks, breathless, when Gellert lets him up for air several long moments later. "Disarm each other back and forth for as long as we live?"

Gellert dances light, teasing fingers down Albus's chest. "We would never be bored, clashing wands with each other forever." He pauses, and smirks. "So to speak."

Albus's austere expression doesn't change, but his eyes, as always, betray his amusement. "I've half a mind to draw my wand on you already," he says pointedly, running his fingers through Gellert's hair and levitating  _Shadows and Spirits_ back to the bookshelf with a wave of his other hand, "for wanton cruelty to books."

"I thought you liked me wanton," Gellert purrs, straddling Albus in earnest now and grinding down—suppressing a satisfied smile at the way his breath catches in his throat.

"Wanton, yes," agrees Albus, "but never cruel." His hand slaps down on Gellert's arse, then squeezes hard, and it is Gellert's turn to find his breath gone slightly shallow. "Particularly not to priceless antique folios." 

Gellert huffs dismissively. “I’ll give you more. I will build you a castle full of books, and we can sleep with rare Beedle texts under our pillows.”

"Hmm," Albus says, considering. His fingers trail down Gellert's spine, slow and suggestive. “I doubt we’ll be doing much sleeping, in this castle of yours.”

“Oh?” Gellert rolls his hips with a look of angelic innocence. “Why not?”

Albus pulls him close, and breathes out, “Far too busy reading.”

Gellert groans enormously and starts to twist away, but Albus laughs and holds him tight and claims his mouth again, kissing him until Gellert forgets his mock annoyance, forgets every spell he knows, forgets his own  _name._ Albus's lips are soft and warm and incandescently wonderful, curved into a smile when he pulls back at last to cup Gellert's jaw in his hands, thumbs stroking his cheekbones. "You," he says fondly, "are distracting."

"And you," Gellert answers, slightly dizzy, "are in need of a distraction." It's true in more ways than one, and Albus's smile falters. Gellert presses a quick kiss to his wrist and rushes on. "We have spent all day between your pages—surely we can now spend time between your sheets." He lowers his voice with a wicked smile. "Or between your cheeks, if you prefer."

Albus flushes  _so_ very prettily. "First," he manages to say with far more dignified composure than anyone else would be capable of under the circumstances, "put those books back between my  _shelves_ , if you'd be so kind."

Gellert grins, and raises a hand simmering with magic. Tomes scattered across the floor fly into the air, arranging themselves into neat stacks on the bookshelves behind him without so much as a word or glance. A flicker of surprise crosses Albus's face, shifting quickly into a searing look that Gellert registers, triumphantly, as lust. Extravagant displays of wandless and non-verbal magic are one of Albus's most reliable weaknesses.

Gellert is fast becoming intimately acquainted with Albus's weaknesses.

Then he tugs at Gellert's hair just hard enough to hurt, and it occurs to him, with vague distress, that Albus may be taking note of  _his_ as well.

The thought is fleeting—Albus has him pressed against the bookshelves moments later, and suddenly Gellert is no longer thinking at all. This kiss is hard, heart-stopping, Albus pinning him to the shelves with a bruising grip on his waist as Gellert's tongue licks into his mouth with such hunger that it feels like claiming him—like claiming each other. When Gellert stumbles back against the books, sending several falling to the floor, they laugh into each other's mouths and pull back, breathing hard. 

"So much for my meticulous categorization," Gellert pants out. "I sorted alphabetically, you know."

"How impeccably precise of you," says Albus, eyes dancing as he reaches for two fallen books. "That would be why Limus's  _Magical Hieroglyphs and Logograms_ was next to Bagshot's  _The Decline of Pagan Magic,_ I suppose." 

Gellert grabs the latter at once, opening it to find a handwritten note on the title page. "For my dear Albus," he reads, grinning, "with love from Bathilda." Albus, delightfully, blushes—Gellert laughs. "Why, my dear,  _dear_ Albus," he teases, tapping the book against his chest, "I begin to suspect you're seducing me to get to my aunt."

"Alas, you've discovered my dastardly plan." Albus leans closer, mouth hovering at Gellert's ear, and murmurs, "Is it working?"

"Sensationally." Gellert tilts his head back, offering his throat as Albus's lips move down his jawline to suck at a vein. "Consider me seduced."

Aunt Bathilda's seminal work falls back to the floor, but Albus now has more pressing concerns than the mistreatment of books. Gellert is about to unfasten his trousers, when a jolt of realization makes him freeze.

"Loxias," he breathes, and Albus chokes out something between a laugh and a groan.

"Ah, are we meant to be play-acting? Do tell, are you Arcus or Livius?"

"No," Gellert says intently, "I've just remembered—it was Bathilda's book that did it—"

"Bathilda's book," Albus repeats with distinct incredulity.

"She has written on Divination, historical practices—do you have it?" Gellert scans the shelves until a familiar green spine catches his eye: _The Oracle of Palombo._ "Of course you do."

Before he can seize the book, it flies off the shelf and into Albus's hand. "Not this one," he says in a faint, strained voice. Gellert stares, and Albus clears his throat. "Her weakest work, really—liberties taken with historiography—"

"I will pass along your critique," snorts Gellert, reaching out a hand—Albus twists it away and out of reach at once. 

"Let us ask for Bathilda's copy, if you're so suddenly and inexplicably interested in ancient oracles. My own is covered in annotations—practically unreadable—" He cuts off with a strangled noise of protest as Gellert wordlessly Summons _The Oracle of Palombo_  into his own hands.

As soon as he touches it—as soon as he feels the unmistakable sensation of Albus's magic emanating from it—Gellert understands: this is not  _The Oracle of Palombo_ at all. "You've enchanted it," he murmurs, tracing the gilded binding. "A glamour."

Albus opens his mouth, then shuts it tightly, as Gellert hovers a hand over the book and casts,  _"Revelio."_ Green shifts to red, engraved letters of title and author rearranging themselves into different words entirely: _"Extreme Incantations,"_  he reads aloud, "by Violeta Stitch."

Gellert looks up, gleeful and astounded, to find Albus cringing—cheeks gone as scarlet as the book. "This is _Dark._  You used Bathilda as a cover for your study of the Dark Arts. Literally." He laughs, inordinately pleased. The past several weeks have made Gellert better acquainted with Albus Dumbledore than any other person alive, yet he continues, somehow, to surprise him. "And to think you've lectured  _me_ on the use of Dark magic. What other secrets hide within your bookshelves?" 

"It's not Dark," snaps Albus, attempting to Summon the book back—in vain, as Gellert has already cast a silent  _Protego._ "Not really. Merely an... unconventional study... of arcane magic, considered somewhat—indecorous—by certain elements of society—"

"Indecorous," Gellert says, droll, "is one word for it. Others would be decadent, degenerate, _deranged—_ shall I go on, or is my mastery of the English tongue sufficient?"

Albus blinks. "You have—heard of it?"

"Heard of it?" Gellert laughs again, incandescent with mirth. Oh, this is too good. Albus is too _good_. "I have read it, many times. This book—" He caresses the familiar spine and flicks through the pages. "—was notorious within the Durmstrang dormitories. Always carefully disguised, of course—your instincts are faultless, as ever."

Albus blushes even redder. "Did you—I mean to say—have you ever—"

"Experimented with a few of its more  _extreme_ incantations?" Albus swallows, and Gellert smirks. "Of course not," he lies easily. "I lacked a worthy partner in experimentation." True enough—none of the boys at Durmstrang were anything more than toys. "Have you?" The very idea of Albus having toys of his own is as enraging as it impossible: Gellert is perfectly and magnificently aware that Albus's sexual experience begins, and ends, with him.

"No," he says faintly, still flushed. "Purely academic curiosity."

"Naturally," Gellert says wryly. The image of Albus lying alone in bed with an infamous sexual spellbook, fantasizing about all sorts of acts he never dared act on until Gellert arrived in his life—convincing himself it was for purposes of intellectual research all the while—is distinctly delicious. "Academic uses for sexual sorcery must be many and varied."

 _"Magia sexualis,_ _"_ Albus says with stiff hauteur, "has a long historical tradition. Ancient Egyptian priests and pharaohs incorporated sexual pleasure into their ceremonial rites, and medieval grimoires liken ritual release to a kind of alchemy, a way to transmute power from the energy of the body to the energy of the divine—a sacrament, of sorts—"

 _"Sacratus,"_ Gellert says softly. The Latin word for  _hallowed._ When Albus meets his gaze, now, he no longer looks flustered: he looks keen, and sharp, and hungry. Something burns in Gellert's chest—the fire at the core of him flaring fast to life as he recalls his original aim in searching through Albus's bookshelves, and ignites with a sudden spark of inspiration.

"I admit," he says aloud, "your disregard for Divination wounds me. Of all books to hide your purely academic interest in sex magic,  _The Oracle of Palombo?"_  

Albus's mouth twists in amusement. "You will have to forgive me, then—my opinion of Seers was not high before this summer. I could never understand Bathilda's fascination." 

"In fairness," Gellert says, shrugging, "there are many make-believe soothsayers and false prophets, and very few _true_ Seers like myself. Which brings us," he finishes with a flourish, "back to Loxias."

Albus gives him a quizzical look. "Go on."

"The letters that survive, the journals, the papers—there is never a surname, never any hint of a bloodline, magic or Muggle, never a single clue to his identity, except that name. Loxias."

Albus tilts his head. "A pseudonym."

"A very particular pseudonym," Gellert says pointedly. "As you would know if you had _read_ Bathilda's book, Loxias was a title of Apollo at the Oracle of Delphi, and Apollo was the god of—" 

"Prophecy," Albus finishes, staring at Gellert in comprehension. "You think Loxias was a Seer."

Gellert smiles. "A Seer, or a god—but what's the difference?"

Albus lifts a brow. "Unless you can commune with the divine, I fail to see how Loxias's Inner Eye brings us any closer to the Elder Wand."

"But what if I _can_ commune with the divine?" Gellert holds up  _Extreme Incantations,_ and Albus draws a sharp breath. "What if," he continues, exhilarated with illuminated purpose, "we can induce a vision, invoke a connection—use our combined powers to create a conduit to the world beyond our own? What better way to find the Wand of Destiny than to call on Destiny itself?"

"Seer's Sleep," Albus says quietly. His cheeks are no longer red, but white: he's paled considerably. "You want to try the  _Divina Somnum_ ritual."

Gellert's smile sharpens as he opens the book and finds the page. His heart is beating fast—with excitement, or nerves, or both. The prospect of intentionally triggering a vision was always too unnerving to fully contemplate, but that was before he began the Hallows quest. That was before he met Albus.

"'This most secret rite of Divination,'" he reads, "'requires a ritualist and a Seer to perform acts of a most deviant nature.'" Gellert glances up at Albus, grimly amused. "How fortunate that we are already deviants of the highest order." Albus chokes out a laugh, and Gellert reads on. "'The ritualist must bring the Seer to a state of profound arousal without release until he or she becomes exhausted and falls into a prophetic trance known as _Divina Somnum,_ or the Seer's Sleep.'"

Skimming the subsequent paragraphs, Gellert finds the half-remembered line he's looking for at last: "'By speaking the incantation and focusing their shared will upon a desired goal in the moment of release, the ritualist and Seer can achieve a revelation in any magical operation, from the invocation of a spirit to the finding of hidden treasure.'"

Gellert's eyes light up victory, and Albus releases a breath. 

"You skipped over the warning," he says tersely. "'Once entranced within _Divina Somnum,_ some Seers never wake.' People have  _died,_ Gellert. This is old magic, chaos magic—tampering with forces we do not fully understand and cannot completely control."

"Yes," Gellert says lightly. "That would be why I called it Dark."

Albus simply stares at him for several long, tense seconds. Gellert moves closer with a seductive smile. "Do you mean to tell me," he says slowly, sliding a hand along Albus's narrow hipbone to find the gratifying hardness in his trousers, "the idea of joining together in ritual ecstasy doesn't excite you?" Gellert leans closer, presses harder, and Albus leans into him, surrendering. "The idea of penetrating a realm of magical theory so few have explored, the idea of finally satisfying all that... academic curiosity... with _me_."

"It is entirely immoral," Albus gasps out between skillful strokes of Gellert's fingers, "to convince me to drench my soul in depravity by appealing to my scholarly interests."

"Ordinary morality is for ordinary people," Gellert says, smiling, "and neither of us are that." He lifts up the book with a challenge in his eyes. "Extreme problems, like the Hallows, require extreme solutions. The two of us are more than capable of handling whatever tricks Madam Stitch has up her sleeve."

"Fine," Albus breathes, relenting. Gellert, with effort, quells a triumphant grin and contents himself with a kiss to Albus's throat.  _"Fine._ We can try it. But..." He draws a steadying breath, glancing toward the door that leads to the rest of the Dumbledore house, and the rest of the Dumbledores. "Not here."

Gellert has to agree—even the strongest Silencing Charms may not be sufficient for this particular ritual."The barn," he suggests, and Albus nods. Apprehension seeps away from his face, replaced by a dark heat in his eyes that sends blood rushing between Gellert's legs.

They kiss once more—burning with anticipation—and head for the stairs. 

The brother and the girl are in the living room, playing at some child's game. The girl looks up at once, finding Gellert's gaze with an impassive, intent expression that sends a strange shiver through his spine. He holds her stare, unblinking, until she looks away, docile and vacant once again. Gellert, unsettled, holds the book tighter to his chest.

Albus and his brother are speaking.

"A few hours at most," Albus is saying calmly, "and I'll be back before supper—" 

"Don't bother," Aberforth says, cold. "I'll prepare supper, as I usually do, and you can stay out all night doing..." He glances at Gellert with a derisive snort. "Whatever it is that you do."

"Research," Gellert says brightly. He casts a silent spell and waves the newly enchanted book, sparing Aberforth a condescending smile. "Have you read Bathilda's latest?No, that's insensitive of me—you don't _read_ —"

"Gellert," Albus says, warning.

"—but perhaps you would be interested in this one.  _Omens, Oracles, and the Goat_ , it is called—an overview of Divination throughout history. Hepatomancy, for instance: the ancient Romans would sacrifice goats, cutting them open to read their entrails—"  

"We'll be going now," Albus cuts in, seizing Gellert by the arm. He has time to blow a kiss at Aberforth, who looks torn between revulsion and emphatic loathing, before he's dragged out the door.

As soon as it slams behind them, Gellert tosses Albus the book. "A better disguise, don't you think?"

Albus rolls his eyes, but the corners of his mouth twitch upward. "One of these days you're going to provoke him into dueling you." 

Gellert smiles, slow and sharp. "I would dearly like to see him try."

The barn, of course, smells strongly of goat dung. _Aberforth's revenge,_ thinks Gellert darkly, flicking his wand to Vanish as much of it as possible and clear a large space Scoured of hay to stage the ritual. If he is going to be buggered in a barn, it is going to be a  _clean_ barn.

Albus has other concerns. "We lack the ingredients for these ceremonial preparations," he says, peering at _Extreme Incantations_ with a furrowed brow. "Essence of wormwood, powdered root of asphodel—"

"We don't need any of that," Gellert says dismissively, waving a distracted hand. "Any fortune-telling fraud can toss powder into the air and pretend to have unlocked the Sight. But you cannot prepare for a vision—only channel it once it has come." He winks suggestively at Albus. "In this case, once  _we_ have come."

Raising his wand again in concentration, Gellert murmurs  _Flagrate_ and shapes burning lines of fire into a familiar symbol suspended in the air. 

"The Hallows," Albus breathes out when it's finished, flames dancing across his face. "To function as a rune?"

Gellert nods, and sets his wand aside. "To assist with the channeling."

Albus studies Gellert with a keen, probing expression. "Are you certain—?"

"That I wish to be pushed to prophetic oblivion through 'acts of a most deviant nature'?" Gellert flashes a sardonic smile. "Very certain." He steps closer, challenging. "Are you certain you can do it?"

Albus sets down the book. "Do you doubt my willingness, my prowess, or my deviancy?"

"Your exceptional prowess," Gellert breathes into his ear, biting gently at the lobe, "is not in doubt."

Albus tilts Gellert's chin up to look at him. "Listen to me," he says intently—a note of command in his voice that makes Gellert go still, that makes his breath catch in his throat. "You know the words to end it all, at any time:  _Finite Incantatum._ Speak it, and the ritual is done."

Gellert exhales a short laugh. "Generous, to assume I'll still be capable of spells or speech."

Albus does not smile. "Think it, then—speak it with Legilimency, and I'll cast it myself. Agreed?"

"Agreed," says Gellert, leaning so that Albus feels the hardening bulge in his trousers. "May we proceed? Or are you planning to exhaust me through words alone?"

Albus's mouth hovers over his own, breath hot and sweet against Gellert's lips. Just as Gellert is about to pull him into an impatient kiss, Albus inhales, and speaks the incantation to begin the ritual.

Two things happen in immediate succession: the Hallows symbol flares up above them, nearly singing the rafters, and Gellert is thrown backwards to the ground beneath it. Before he can draw a breath, luminous cords wrap themselves around his wrists, waist, and ankles, forcing him to his feet and binding him to wooden beams on either side.

 _The Fulgari charm_ ,Gellert notes dimly, admiring the glittering restraints. An obscure, and complex, conjuration. Albus is showing off. "Really," he says aloud, "a simple  _Incarcerous_ would do."

"Ropes?" Albus's voice sounds from behind him, stepping closer. "How crass."

Gellert huffs out another laugh. "We are, I might remind you, in a barn." He tugs experimentally at the cords, and finds them unyielding: he is truly, thoroughly bound. It is an unfamiliar and unpleasant feeling, to be at someone else's mercy—even, or perhaps especially, when that someone is Albus. "I don't recall restraints of any kind being part of this particular ritual."

"I'm improvising," says Albus, pressing hard against him from behind now, reaching a hand beneath his shirt to tease at a nipple as the other dips into his trousers. "And you..." His thumb slides over the slippery slit of Gellert's cock. "...are wearing too much clothing."

Gellert jolts against his bindings, caught off-guard by the barn's cool, musky air: Albus has Vanished his clothes, leaving him suddenly and entirely exposed. He lets out a startled, disbelieving laugh. "I _liked_ those trousers."

"I like this better." Gellert can hear the smile in Albus's voice as he kneads his arse. It's both arousing and alarming to be naked as Albus is clothed—to have placed himself so wholly in Albus's careful hands, stripped of all shields and defenses. He's trapped and vulnerable and _aching_ with desire: already agonizingly hard when Albus's hand encircles him from behind, teasing him with slow, languid strokes.

Gellert very deliberately gives no reaction at all. He never gives Albus what he wants straight away, and what Albus wants is _noise_. He wants to draw sounds out of Gellert, all sorts of sounds—he’s not entirely picky, though he likes them to get louder as the evening progresses. 

This evening is progressing rather quickly.

"Albus," he grits out at last, eyes fluttering shut with every sharp lance of pleasure from Albus's fist, "you will make me—" Gellert cuts off with a sharp, strangled gasp as Albus releases him with a final squeeze and twist.

"Not yet," he says softly, circling around to face him—humming in appreciation as his eyes trail down Gellert's body. Having the full, undivided attention of that bright blue gaze sends sparks up Gellert's spine. He feels his cock twitch when Albus's eyes land upon it, and nearly comes undone when he lowers himself to his knees.

By now, Albus's touch feels as familiar as the magic flowing through his veins, and as electrifying. He traces slow fingers up Gellert's thighs, across his stomach, down the light hair below his navel as if caressing an idol: worshipful, imploring. Those brilliant blue eyes lock onto Gellert's, and he is so calm, so serene, so  _radiant,_ that Gellert, suddenly, can barely look at him.  

"Albus," he exhales, and then words escape him entirely as Albus takes him into his mouth.  

There's something mesmerizing about seeing Albus like this: all decorum discarded, kneeling with his lips around Gellert's cock. Debauched, depraved _—deviant,_  according to the delightful Madam Stitch—whatever terms might be used to describe this, none of those words describes Albus. None of those words does justice to the way he presses reverent kisses up and down Gellert's shaft, or gently sucks at his sac while stroking the skin behind it, or swirls his tongue around the head until Gellert is not just moaning but  _keening_.

Albus pleasures him as if performing a sacred rite—and isn't he?

It's the farthest thing from sinful. It feels... holy.

It feels hallowed.

Above them, the gold flames of the Hallows crackle and glow. The air hums and thrums with magic—Gellert's first, true, only love—but all he can see or feel is Albus, the silky wet heat of his mouth as he takes Gellert to the hilt and slides back up again, again, again in perfect rhythm.

Albus is good at this. Albus is  _too_ good at this.

Is there anything he isn't good at?

Every inch of Gellert's body is humming with pleasure, fire curling under his skin, heat pooling in his stomach. He fixates on the movement of Albus's auburn hair; feels almost faint with the desire to weave his fingers into it and  _pull,_ to make Albus feel a fraction of the sensation that's consuming him. Each neuron and tendon feels wire-taut as he pulls at his illuminated bondage, attempting to thrust into Albus's mouth.

Albus smiles at his futile efforts, pressing a kiss to his shaking inner thigh that's really more of a bite—sucking a bruise into Gellert’s golden skin. "You're almost impossibly beautiful, you know."

"And you're  _impossible_ ," huffs Gellert, straining in vain for purchase. A whimpering moan escapes him when one of Albus's long, tapered fingers brushes over his hole, slipping inside and _curving_ just as he sucks the entire length of Gellert's cock down his throat in in one fell swoop.

“I taught you that,” Gellert says faintly. Albus is more than an apt pupil—he’s a prodigy. Gellert has quite possibly created a monster. “I taught you all your tricks.”

Albus has the nerve to look _smug._ “Not all of them,” he says, and places three light fingers against the pulse point at Gellert's groin.

It takes a moment to understand why he's suddenly light-headed, why his pulse is suddenly racing under Albus's fingers, why he's suddenly so hard he's  _throbbing_ , why he can feel his heart pounding in time with the veins in his cock. Blood rushes away from his head in an abrupt vortex of pleasure—all synapses firing, all nerve endings focused on the rhythmic pulsating between his legs.

 _Blood magic,_ Gellert realizes, vision trembling at the edges as though he were very drunk, or fevered. Albus is taking hold of the blood coursing through his veins with magic: controlling the ebb and flow, holding his literal heart in his hands.

It is simultaneously the most terrifying and arousing realization of Gellert’s life.

"Dark," he manages to gasp out, breath gone sharp and shallow in his throat. One of the most challenging and _extreme_ of all the spells in  _Extreme Incantations,_ one that Gellert has never trusted his own self-control enough to try himself—masterfully executed in Albus's disciplined hands.

Albus's face is alight with concentration and elation. "Yes," he breathes. "I suppose it is." His eyes trail over Gellert's body, transfixed with the movement of his magic through veins  _shining_ beneath skin gone translucent.

Blackness overtakes the corners of Gellert's vision: he is all sensation, everything centered around the swell of arousal in his blood, bringing him so close his stomach coils. Anticipation burns within him, perched perilously on the edge of divine euphoria—when suddenly, torturously, it stops.

Albus has removed his hands and magic, leaving Gellert shaking and almost sobbing with thwarted release. 

"Albus," he hears himself order—or plead—"let me _come_."

“‘Rouse the Seer sexually by every known means of stimulation, but do not allow release.’” Albus is breathing rather hard himself, chest rising and falling rapidly as he rises from his knees. “Madam Stitch could not be more clear.”

“Madam Stitch,” seethes Gellert, “is a crazy bitch.”

Albus brushes back a sweat-soaked golden curl, impossibly tender. "You know the words. If you are too exhausted to continue, you may speak them." Gellert curses in German, feeling positively _feral,_ and Albus—damn him— _laughs._ "I implore you to remember," he says with the utmost affection, "this was your idea."

Gellert bites back a groan that twists into a snarl. "I am going to—" He chokes off mid-threat, gasping, as Albus kneels behind him, now, to spread apart his arse.

"You won't be doing much of anything, I'm afraid." Albus's fingers trace over his hole as if it's something precious, something treasured. "Not to put too fine a point on it, but you are, quite literally, spellbound."

Gellert chokes out an incoherent sound as Albus slips a spell-slicked finger all the way inside him before pulling out, twisting, and sliding back in. He loves Albus's fingers, has always loved the elegant taper of them as they curve around a wand or quill or run down the spine of a book—but having them put to this use is something else entirely, a feeling so exquisitely perverse that Gellert, once again, can barely breathe.

A shuddering moan shivers out of him when Albus’s clever, _clever_ tongue dances out to lick tight, puckered skin, darting inside him with tantalizing dexterity before pulling back again, glancing up at Gellert as he twists to look at him—lips glistening in a way that looks decidedly obscene.

Albus’s fingers are still teasing, pressing at his rim, and he has that _look_ on his face, one of Gellert’s very favorite looks—that look of slightly startled wonder, as if he still can’t quite believe they’re doing this, that Gellert is _letting_ him do this, that Gellert is _real_ and not a fevered dream.

"Gellert," he breathes, beatific, and then two fingers push inside: stretching him, filling him, finding that particular spot within him that sets his world on fire.

Gellert feels like an expensive musical instrument being played by a virtuoso, every purposeful twist and thrust igniting some new moan or groan—building to a crescendo of pleasure. Being opened and rendered defenseless at Albus's hands is intense to the point of mindlessness: his entire body is caught up in the stroking slide of those long fingers, slow and slow and slow until Gellert’s thighs are trembling, until he's tugging at the luminous cords not in an attempt to free himself, but an attempt to keep himself standing. 

He tries and fails to swallow down the whine at the back of his throat when Albus's fingers pull out of him to _snap_ with a crackle of magic—and all of a sudden, the cords of light are moving, dragging him down on his back atop a bale of something coarse and leafy.

"Hay," groans Gellert. "You're rolling me in the _hay_."

A small smile plays about Albus's lips. "A change of scenery, perhaps?"

There is an intense and searching light behind Albus's blue eyes, as if something is burning behind them. Gellert falls into that lightning gaze, and when he blinks, their surroundings have... shifted.

He's no longer bound to a haystack, but to an enormous four-poster bed: luxurious and sensuous, covered in crimson pillows threaded with gold and sheets of spell-woven silk. The walls are no longer those of a wooden barn, but made of smooth dark stone with torches flickering across the high, arched ceiling—lined with at least half a dozen cluttered bookshelves.

A stone bedchamber filled with books.

Albus has transported them to their imaginary castle with Legilimency.

Gellert looks into those twinkling eyes, so blue and bright they're almost blinding, and laughs, stunned with delight. 

Has there ever been a wizard quite as gifted, as extraordinary, as _spectacular_  as Albus Dumbledore?

Aside from Gellert Grindelwald, of course.

"As you envisioned?" Albus asks, climbing over him, mirroring his grin.

"Almost," Gellert says in a low purr, wrapping his legs around Albus to draw him closer. "There is only one thing I would change."

Albus raises a questioning brow, then inhales a sharp gasp of surprise: Gellert has non-verbally Vanished his own clothing.

Gellert leans back against the pillows in perfect satisfaction, taking in every pale inch of bared skin—silently thanking the universe for seeing fit to grant him such an immaculate visual spectacle as Albus Dumbledore stripped of his clothes. He wants to press his mouth to every part of Albus's lithe body, so thin and deceptively fragile: run his lips over the lean muscles of his chest and arms; lick his tongue over those hard pink nipples, biting at the tender skin until Albus makes a very specific, _very_ satisfying sound; drag his mouth up and down that magnificent cock hanging between his legs—larger than Gellert's, in the most distressingly pleasurable way.

Albus gives a punishing squeeze to Gellert's tight, swollen balls, wringing out a hissing groan. "You," he says, straddling Gellert and moving so that their bare cocks slide together, "are incorrigible."

Gellert can't summon up more than a moan in reply as a teasing hand moves up his torso to pinch at his nipples. His own hands are still tightly bound against the wooden—bedposts, or barn rafters, or _wherever_ Albus has seen fit to wrap those infernal cords, restraining him from doing more than writhing as Albus’s hand slides up to his neck, where it pauses—wrapped around his throat like it was made for it.

There’s the promise of something there, the way his fingers twitch and almost imperceptibly tighten. But when Gellert goes still, suddenly breathless, Albus swallows hard and moves his hand away—up, up, until his fingers find Gellert’s lips.

Gellert opens his mouth and sucks in one of those terrible, wicked,  _glorious_ fingers, then another, and a third—hollowing his cheeks and swirling his tongue as Albus’s fingertips brush the back of his throat. He's heady with desire, savoring his own taste on Albus's fingers, but after a moment he pulls them away, and leans back to press them inside himself.

Oh _gods._

Gellert could come just from this, from the sight of Albus fucking himself on his fingers. The way he's leaning back puts his entire lean body on display, makes all that pale skin available to Gellert's eyes, fixed on Albus's fingers and his pink, stretched rim—desperate to join him there with his own fingers, with his entire face. 

The illusion of the castle bedchamber shimmers, flickering out of existence for a moment when Albus's eyes flutter shut, mouth parting with pleasure. Gellert thinks back to a month ago, that seemingly shy, awkward boy whose cheeks burned red at every one of Gellert's winks and calculated touches, who—when Gellert first got him naked—flushed and averted his eyes and covered himself in embarrassment, so flustered by Gellert's hungry stare, by the realization of his own repressed desires.

Drawing out those desires—bringing this shameless, splendid tease into existence in place of that prim and proper schoolboy—has perhaps been Gellert's most successful experiment. 

Much to his own current chagrin.

 _"Fick mich,"_ Gellert groans in desperation, registering only dimly that he seems to have misplaced his ability to speak the English language.

Thankfully, _fuck me_ sounds much the same in any tongue.

Albus smiles faintly, taut belly quivering—hard cock leaking over Gellert's own. "Surely it's not too much," he manages to say far too evenly, "to ask a _little_ patience."  

When he positions himself over Gellert at last, he's shaking slightly: the tremble in his body one of tightly-wound power. A murmured spell—another favorite of the Durmstrang dormitories—and slowly,  _slowly,_ he lowers himself down on Gellert's slicked-up cock. 

It's gorgeous, it's obscene, watching their bodies meet in the most intimate of ways: to feel himself inside Albus, silken walls constricting and throbbing around him; to see the two of them joined together as one. Albus slides up and down in deep, slow thrusts, finding a rhythm, lowering himself again and again—far more carefully and deliberately than Gellert is able to do when roles are reversed. It's staggering, how controlled Albus can still be, even when impaling himself on Gellert's cock.

This is exactly what Albus needs, Gellert knows: needs the control, needs to test his own ability to hold himself back, needs to draw out his craving for power in self-contained pieces and not lose himself in it entirely.

But that's not what Gellert needs at all.

He shoves forward and grinds his hips up so that Albus drops his head back and _moans_ —voice dropping by strangled octaves, one hand darting out to seize Gellert's hair with a steadying, near-painful grip as the other wraps around his own cock. 

It’s one of Gellert’s favorite things to watch Albus pleasure himself, the veins of his lower arm bulging slightly with the effort and the lean muscles under his skin tensing as he gets closer; the slight frown across his forehead and the tremble in his thighs as he tightens around Gellert, as Gellert bucks up hard and sees his breath hitch in his throat.

No one else has ever seen him like this; no one else has ever done the things to him that Gellert wants to do, has done, is doing. Only him. It makes something ferociously possessive swell in him. Albus is _his_. All his. Every centimeter of all that skin, all that strength and power hidden underneath, is his.

He whines in protest when Albus suddenly climbs off him, and is silenced with a hard kiss. The luminous cords drag him down to the edge of the bed as Albus stands, parting his legs with a bruising grip. His serenity has slipped; his eyes are on  _fire._ He's a different kind of radiant, now. He's ablaze. Gellert is breathless with it, with having managed at last to shake that unshakeable calm. It's not until he feels the slick head of Albus's cock against his hole that he remembers there are some things only Albus has done to _him,_ too. 

The sudden hard thrust of Albus sliding all the way inside him is just fast and rough enough to dance around the edges of pain. His hips slap against Gellert's, punching the air out of his lungs, and before Gellert can even register how far inside he is, he pulls back and slams right back into him. 

There’s something about being tied down like this, forced to lie there and take Albus’s cock as it tears sounds out of him he’s fairly sure he’s never made before, that's overwhelming in the very best of ways. He never would have thought he'd like it, the feel of a cock buried inside him—the submission of the act had always seemed intolerable. Gellert took his pleasure from others, used their bodies as he wished and wanted nothing more—until Albus.

He's never wanted anyone the way he wants Albus—his perfect equal, his only worthy match. It's not submission, with Albus, whichever one of them is doing the fucking: it's mutual surrender. It's transcendent. It's sublime. They share dominion over each other's bodies, as they will share dominion over the world.

Gellert's heart thumps wildly in his chest, the rush of blood in his ears a roar that blocks out everything but Albus as he shifts the angle with his fingers digging into Gellert's thighs, pounding into him with short, hard jabs at that precise spot inside him until Gellert is seeing stars.

His cock is pulsing, leaking; flooded with sensation and impossibly hard. He can feel waves of heat lick at his skin with how far he’s being pushed to the limit of pleasure—literal heat, perhaps, as Albus is too consumed with fucking Gellert to within an inch of his life to maintain the Legilimency illusion: they are in the barn again below the Hallows, flames flickering and flaring with every well-aimed thrust. 

Magic rushes madly through his veins: raw, volatile Dark energy buried within him—that ancient, primal force that has nothing to do with waving a wooden stick and dutifully reciting spells—breaking through the surface and threatening to consume him entirely.

He lets the pleasure and power flood him, fill him up until he can hardly breathe from it, until he feels as though he's floating on the edge of oblivion or orgasm or both, until the sound of Albus's voice breaks through the hazy suspension of his mind.  

"Gellert," he gasps out, circling a hand around Gellert's cock and pumping hard. "I am going to—I am going to speak the incantation."

The incantation?

Gellert grasps through his blurred consciousness, tries to think past the impending release that Albus is finally, relentlessly driving him toward. The ritual. This is all for the ritual. Seer's Sleep.

_By speaking the incantation and focusing their shared will upon a desired goal in the moment of release, the ritualist and Seer can achieve a revelation._

_The Wand,_ Gellert thinks in desperation, falling apart under Albus as he gives one last spearing thrust, feeling the crushing wave of his own release building and building, white light bursting at the edges of his vision.  _Loxias. The Wand. Loxias. The Wand. Loxias. Albus. The Wand. Albus. Albus, Albus, Albus—_ it's no use, everything is Albus, he can think of nothing else; the entire universe has compacted down into the two of them joined together, body and mind, heart and soul.

Albus groans out Gellert's name before spilling hot and deep inside him, gasping out the spell with a final pump of his fist on Gellert's cock:  _"Divina Somnum."_  

For a single shattering moment, Gellert is suspended over a cliff's edge of sensation, surrounded by nothing but the darkness of deep water—pressing on him and around him, flooding his senses, beckoning him down into the dark depths of the unknown.

Then, with a shuddering convulsion, he lets go—lets himself fall off the edge.

And drowns.

* * *

When he opens his eyes, it's dark.

The only source of light is a sliver of starlight through an open window, peering out into a cold and cloudy night.

Gellert feels around, disoriented, dazed—searching for a candle, a lantern, a wand.

There is a large wooden table, covered in wood shavings and hairs and flecks of something glittering like gold. Shelves, on the walls: tools, boxes—wands.

A wandmaker's workshop.

Gellert picks up a box from the shelves and attempts to read the label in the dim light of the window.  _Wands,_ it says,  _by—_

Suddenly, another light, flickering past the workshop door from down the hallway—footsteps, hurrying closer. 

 _"Tko je tamo?"_ calls a rough, unknown voice, in a rough, unknown language.  _"Lopov!"_

Gellert turns to the shelf and seizes an unboxed, unlabeled wand.

As soon as his hand curves around it, the world explodes into light.

Several long, blinding seconds later, the white flash clears on a wasteland. Gellert blinks as his vision adjusts, then staggers backward—breathless with horror.

He's standing in a flat expanse of smoking ruins, every surface shattered into rubble. Roofs blown away, walls obliterated, black ash raining down from the sky.

Thousands upon thousands of contorted corpses sprawl out over the streets and stones, an endless sea of bloated bodies as far as the eye can see. Some are maimed and misshapen, with grotesquely swollen abdomens or gleaming eyeballs dangling from sockets. Others have had their skin melted off, raw flesh hanging down in ribbons on the ground. Many are no longer recognizably human at all: scorched husks littering the landscape, scattered into ash. 

It's eerily silent and still, not a single bug or bird in that blackened sky. Gellert alone walks stunned among the wreckage: the only living thing in this hellscape of the dead.

Until a voice sounds from behind him.

"A rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth."

Gellert turns. 

A hooded man in plain dark robes stands in the rubble, staring at the skeletal remains of a building. His voice is cold and piercing, with an accent that Gellert can't place.

"The lucky ones will feel nothing," he says like a prophecy. "A blinding blast, then darkness. Only their shadows will remain." Gellert follows his gaze to a strange scorch mark on the ruined wall, shaped like a human figure: the imprint of a vanished soul. Gellert catches his breath, and the stranger looks up at last. "Most will not be so lucky."

The robed man seems somehow ageless, with gray eyes so light they're almost silver and striking features impossible to define as young or old. There is an aura of ethereality around him, as though he is half-ghost, or an illusion that might flicker away at any moment.

"Who are you?"

"A Seer, like yourself." The stranger tilts his head. "You called me."

Gellert stares into those silver eyes, and understands. "Loxias." A faint tug of his lips is his only answer. "What happens here?"

"You know what happens. You have Seen it. So have I." The wizard known as Loxias looks out at the carnage all around them, then up at the ashen sky. "Again and again and again." 

Images from the worst of Gellert's waking nightmares flash across his memory with rapid-fire brutality: the machines, the camps, the slaughter, an inescapable new weapon falling from the sky—igniting into an explosion that splits apart the universe. 

Words claw their way out of his throat. "The war to come... That weapon... This is..."

"After." Loxias's silver gaze drags down to Gellert's right hand: still clutching, he realizes with a jolt, the stolen wand. "I searched the world for a weapon to rival the one to come." Gellert gapes at the wand in his hand, heart soaring, fingers _buzzing,_ barely listening as Loxias finishes. "By the time I found it, this vision had driven me mad."

Gellert lifts the Elder Wand, entranced, turning it over and over in his hands: memorizing the dark wood's every grain and groove. "We will stop this," he says distantly. None of this annihilation matters, anymore—this vision will not come to pass. He will succeed where Loxias failed... because he, unlike Loxias, will have Albus Dumbledore at his side. "Albus and I will stop it."

"Stop it?" he hears as if from very far away. "Why would you stop it?" Gellert drags his eyes away from the Wand with concentrated effort. "I See in Death what I could not in life," Loxias is saying, no longer looking at Gellert—gazing again at the black ash falling from the sky. "This weapon will end the war."

Gellert feels his mouth fall open. "Then... all of this..." He fixates on a nearby corpse, half-buried in the rubble: hair burnt to the scalp, glass shards growing out of its skin. "All of this Death and destruction..."

Loxias looks to him, impassive. "Necessary sacrifices."

_Extreme problems require extreme solutions._

"For the greater good," Gellert whispers. The Wand in his hands feels searing hot.

"I am become Death," intones Loxias, "destroyer of worlds. If you wish to master Death, you must become accustomed to destruction."

The Muggles, it would seem, are well-accustomed.

"If they are capable of this," Gellert says slowly, "without magic..."

"Then you must be capable of worse." Loxias's silver stare is sharp. "What are you capable of, Gellert Grindelwald? What will you do, to build a better world from the ashes of their old?"

Gellert tightens his grip on the Wand. "Whatever it takes."

Loxias almost smiles. "We shall See." 

He turns as if to go, as if to leave Gellert in this barren, ashen boneyard all alone, and he cries out without thinking, "Wait!"

Loxias looks back, expressionless. "I have shown you what you need to See. I have told you what you need to know."

"Arcus and Livius," says Gellert. The Wand is pulsating against his palm, beating in his hand like a second heart. "Which of them murdered you?"

Is it Gellert's imagination, or does a flicker of some indefinable emotion cross Loxias's mask-like face? It vanishes in an instant, and he is impassive once again. "Neither," he says coolly. "It was my mother." His silver eyes bore into Gellert: penetrating, shrewd. "They can be volatile, can't they? Seers, and their mothers."

Gellert brushes thoughts of his own mother aside to focus on the question at hand. "What happened to her, after?"

"Arcus and Livius killed her," Loxias says dispassionately. "Together, of course. They always killed together." He pauses with a final, chilling almost-smile. "Fitting, then, that they died together, too." 

Gellert blinks, and the face inside the hood is a grinning skull. He steps back with a gasp as the hooded skeleton disintegrates to ash—as the ruins all around crumble alongside him, dissolving into nothingness and leaving only flat, scorched earth.

He's no longer in a city, but a field.

A battlefield, if the scorch marks on the flattened grass are any indication.

His entire being feels suddenly _exhausted_ —drained of strength and power, as though he has been casting spells for hours without rest. Spinning around, Gellert sees a throng of figures in the distance: indistinct and blurred, unable to be identified as anything but shadows from afar.

An army?

Is he meant to fight them all?

"Kill me, then, Grindelwald."

Gellert freezes at the familiar voice: heart skipping a beat in his chest.

The Wand, still in his hand, is smoking. He raises it, and turns. 

An older, fiercer Albus stands before him: _power_ radiating from him, blue eyes blazing with such intensity that Gellert half-expects to be set aflame. He is wandless, wounded—beaten, bloodied, bruised—but he limps forward with grim determination, beautiful and terrible and  _great._

"I do not fear Death," he says quietly, stopping when he is directly in front of Gellert, when the Wand is at his chest—over his heart. That burning blue gaze finds his own, trapping him in its thrall. "Do you?"

Gellert cannot move—cannot speak—cannot breathe. Who is this Albus—this harrowing wizard, this vengeful deity, this relentless, fearless man who looks at him with revulsion in his eyes and calls him _Grindelwald?_ What has he done, to make Albus hate him so? What has  _Albus_ done, to end up at the end of the Wand in Gellert's hand?

The answer lies before him: in the scorched earth of the battlefield they stand on, in the Dark currents he feels surging through his blood, in the heat of the Wand, in the wounds on Albus's skin.

 _What are you capable_ _of, Gellert Grindelwald?_  

Albus, he Sees now with excruciating clarity, stands here as his enemy—stands between Gellert and all that he will fight and sacrifice and suffer to build, to save.  

_What will you do?_

Albus alone can match him. Albus alone can equal him. Albus alone can stop him from doing what must be done.

 _Whatever it takes._  

The spell is at the tip of Gellert's fingers. The words are at the tip of Gellert's tongue. A flash of green, and those blue eyes will close forever. His only threat, his only rival, eliminated in six syllables. The Wand is his, and his alone. The  _world_ is his.

So why is he still frozen?

Why can't he speak?

_"Expelliarmus."_

The Wand flies into Albus's waiting hand.

Gellert has no time to even blink before he's forced to his knees, familiar cords of light snaking around his limbs and binding him fast to the ground.

_The Fulgari charm._

Half-hysteric laughter tears its way out of Gellert's mouth, twisting quickly to a guttural, growling scream. He struggles fruitlessly against the restraints somehow binding his magic as Albus looks down from above, fingers white around the Wand. "It's over, Gellert," he says in a low, unsteady voice. "It's done."

And with that, he turns his back on Gellert and walks away.

"Albus!" Gellert hears himself scream. Albus flinches, shoulders shaking, but does not look back.  _"Albus!"_

A deafening roar flares up from the shadows in the distance, moving closer, closing in.

_It's over, Gellert._

_Albus,_ Gellert screams, again and again, until his voice is hoarse and his throat is raw, until the screams of the advancing crowd drown his out entirely, until Albus and the Wand have disappeared within them and Gellert is surrounded on all sides by other wands.

 _Gellert,_  Albus's voice says in his head. _It's done._

_The ritual is done._

* * *

Gellert, gasping, sits up in a barn in Godric's Hollow. 

Corporeality returns with a vengeance. He is naked, aching—no longer bound, but absolutely _wrecked_  with fatigue. His entire body feels spent and sore: stiffness in his limbs, chafing on his wrists and back, Albus's fluids leaking out of— _Albus._

Albus is kneeling naked at his side, young and unharmed and unarmed; blue eyes wide and brimming with tears.

"Gellert," he chokes out.  _"Gellert."_ Albus raises a trembling hand to stroke Gellert's cheek, his brows, his lips, as if re-committing his entire face to memory. "I thought—I feared—" The wetness in his eyes spills over as he pulls Gellert to him in a tight embrace. "It's over," he says shakily into his ear, and again: steadier, firmer. "It's over."

In a shivering instant, Gellert has Summoned his wand and pressed it to Albus's throat.

Albus releases him at once—going perfectly still. "Gellert," he whispers, tears trailing silent down his cheeks. Gellert digs the wand in deeper, feels it simmering in his hand—sees Albus hiss in pain when it burns his skin. A Dark inferno of violence is restrained, just barely, beneath the surface of Gellert's own throbbing skin; a bubble of hysteria clawing at his throat as Albus's lips part to say, "I lov—"

Gellert drops the wand, and silences Albus with a bruising kiss.

Albus stiffens, then leans into him—allowing Gellert to claim his mouth with vicious fervor. When Gellert pulls away at last, head spinning, Albus is smiling weakly with relief: positively  _shining_ with... with adoration.

"Stay," Gellert manages. He barely recognizes his own voice, how rough and faint it sounds. "Stay with me."

Before Albus can respond, Gellert collapses, falling back against the hay.

He dimly registers Albus Conjuring something over him, something soft and warm—a blanket—before kneeling again at his side. Those clever hands hover above him, leaving spell-light in their wake: casting Scouring and Healing spells, soothing all his aches and settling his blood. Slowly but surely, all tension seeps out of Gellert's body until he is no longer shaking and shivering, no longer covered in sweat and other fluids, no longer curled tightly into himself but curved into Albus as he finally slips beneath the blanket to lay at his side.

Gellert returns to his waking self in pieces: grasping his way back to the surface with every calming breath and soothing spell, with every grounding touch. He looks up at the shadowed roof of the barn as Albus presses gentle kisses to his shoulder. "The sign," he murmurs hazily. The fiery symbol of the Hallows has burned out. "What—?"

Albus buries his face in the crook of Gellert's neck. "The flames went wild, after I spoke the incantation. I put them out before they could burn down the barn."

Gellert thinks back to the unknown wandmaker's workshop, the sudden flare of light. "Did I..." He swallows, throat gone dry. "Did I speak, at all, while Sleeping?"

Albus drags his eyes up to meet Gellert's—pained. "You said my name, at the end," he says quietly. "You—screamed it." He pulls Gellert closer, pressing their foreheads together with one light hand around the back of his neck. "You weren't responding to _Rennervate_ or _Reparifors,_  and I—" He draws a shuddering breath. "I could no longer feel your heartbeat, so I cast  _Finite Incantatum_ to end the ritual." He pauses, tentative, then asks at last, "What did you See?"

Gellert stares at him a moment—rattled, haunted—and something in his expression makes Albus wilt. 

"It doesn't matter," he says quickly. "You don't have to—"

"Nothing," Gellert hears himself answer flatly. Albus stops, mouth falling open, and Gellert takes a steadying moment to Occlude his mind before meeting Albus's gaze. "I remember only darkness."

Does Albus believe him? He studies Gellert for a long, perilous moment, blue eyes darting back and forth between his own—brow furrowed in concern. Gellert considers dipping into his head, sifting through his thoughts with covert Legilimency, but cannot trust his skill, at the moment, not to give himself away or accidentally offer up his _own_  thoughts instead.

Finally, Albus shakes his head, distraught. "The ritual didn't work properly."

Gellert remembers the frenzied state of his mind at that shattering moment of release; summoning up intent while so wholly... distracted.

_The Wand. Loxias. Albus._

The ritual had worked perfectly. 

"I did it wrong," Albus says, stricken. "I went too far. I—improvised too much." His eyes are shining with tears again. "Can you forgive me?"

Gellert looks at him, this extraordinary wizard, this brilliant boy overflowing with strength and tenderness and— _love_ —and Sees the thundering force of nature who faced down Death and took the Wand and left him tied up on a battlefield alone. The older, colder Albus he could not find the will to kill.

 _This_ Albus has not betrayed him. _This_ Albus has not abandoned him.

If Gellert can secure the future, this Albus never will.

And if he can't—if fate still finds them facing off over the Wand upon that battlefield—well, then next time, Gellert will be prepared.

 _Whatever it takes._  

"There is nothing to forgive," he says aloud—lightening his tone with effort. "Madam Stitch may be a talented witch in certain  _other_  areas, but Divination is clearly not her strong suit. The blame lies with her." Gellert strokes a hand through Albus's auburn hair, remembering the feel of the Wand between his fingers. "It was a foolish idea," he adds carefully, "to seek the Wand through visions. The Hallows are a riddle of the past, not of the future."

Albus smiles faintly. "So you admit my focus on  _history_ books has been appropriate all along."

"Appropriate, yes," says Gellert, quirking a teasing brow, "but  _in_ appropriate is far more fun. Besides... there are other ways for Madam Stitch to prove her usefulness." 

He crooks a finger, Summoning  _Extreme Incantations_ into his hand.

"When we are—recovered—" A long bath and twelve to fourteen hours of actual sleep would be a good start. "—I believe I may have a solution to a different problem regarding the Wand: how we can share it, when we find it." He attempts a smile. "No clashing of wands required."

Albus eyes him uncertainly: his expression a startled blend of consternation and curiosity. "Tell me," he says softly, and Gellert knows, with perfect, visionary clarity, that the future is secured.

Albus will bind himself to Gellert for all eternity. Albus will follow him anywhere.

Albus is madly in love with him. 

Gellert opens the book, and asks, "Did you ever read the chapter on blood troths?"

**Author's Note:**

>   * This piece takes inspiration from infamous occultist Aleister Crowley's ideas about sex magic, particularly 'eroto-comatose lucidity': sexually exhausting a ritualist-seer until he falls into a prophetic trance. "Ordinary morality is for ordinary people" is a Crowley quote.
>   * Loxias really was an epithet of Apollo in his role as the god of prophecy—and the mother of the wizard known as Loxias did claim to have killed him, according to Albus Dumbledore's annotations of _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_.
>   * The destroyed city is, of course, Hiroshima in the wake of the atomic bomb that ended World War II in 1945. "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds," is the paraphrased Hindu scripture spoken by the scientist who oversaw its creation as he watched the first nuclear detonation. Loxias quotes President Truman's public announcement of the bombing: "If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth."
>   * All books mentioned are canonical texts—Bathilda Bagshot really did write those books on Divination, apparently—but _Extreme Incantations_ by Violeta Stitch is actually a second-year Charms textbook. Madam Stitch would likely be scandalized by its use herein.
> 



End file.
